doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Pattern plate white grease paint formula

About fifteen years ago Kevin and Barb Pickett, the owners of River Hills Sporting Clays near Boonville Missouri gave me this formula for white grease paint for a steel patterning plate. We�ve used it at our club for many years with wonderful results, and I mixed up a batch this afternoon.

You will need.

Three gallon plastic bucket with lid. A five gallon bucket may be used, but the three gallon size allows a standard house paint roller to reach the grease paint easier and with less mess.

Two quarts of new cheap motor oil. I use 5W-30, but any motor oil works.

Two quarts of cheap, white, latex house paint.

Four 16 ounce cans of white lithium wheel bearing grease.

Pour equal parts motor oil, paint, and white grease in bucket and stir until completely mixed using a paint stirrer chucked in a cordless drill.

Dip end of roller in grease paint and paint the plate. The lid on the bucket only keeps the grease paint clean. It does not freeze in cold weather or get runny in hot weather. The grease paint never really dries out or gets hardened. We store the bucket and the roller in a cheap paint tray in an old pickup bed tool box behind the patterning plate.

You�ll only need to refresh the paint on the plate occasionally. A roller will wipe off patterns with one pass. Replacement paint rollers are very cheap, and last for years.

This formula works in any weather you can stand to shoot patterns in. It doesn�t fly off the roller hardly at all on your clothes. It cleans off you hands and guns or anything else, with any hand cleaner and a paper towel.

If you start with a gallon and a half, when the bucket is about three quarters empty, one quart of oil, two cans of white grease, and one quart of white latex house paint stirred in brings the mix halfway up on the three gallon bucket and makes dipping the roller easier and less messy. We use latex paint because it cleans up easier than oil based paint. Once the plate is painted entirely and the house paint roller saturated with grease paint you�ll use very little of this, and might only need to top off the grease paint every year or two.

We�ve tried used motor oil and never will again. New motor oil makes the formula an off white that shows every pellet strike perfectly, and looks much better.

If you are using cans of white spray paint now, you�ll stop that forever if you try this. It�s less messy, much easier, faster, cheaper, and no need to mess with cans of spray paint. The roller just spreads the grease paint on the plate and roller and covers up the old pattern with a few swipes (no new grease paint required for the entire session) and you put the roller behind the plate and shoot again.

There�s surely other formulas for white grease paint for patterning plates, but equal parts motor oil, white latex house paint, and white wheel bearing grease works for us very well.